Residents Report Bright Streak Over Bay Area Friday Evening 123
The Chabot Space and Science Center has received numerous reports of a bright object flying through the sky in over northern California Friday night, as noted by The Washington Post, NBC, and others. According to NBC's version of the story "Chabot astronomers in Oakland said the meteor was not related to the asteroid passing near Earth. Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, said he did not see it, but based on accounts he thinks it was a 'sporadic meteor.' Sporadic meteors bring as much as 15,000 tons of space debris to Earth each year, according to McKeegan. He said it was likely smaller than another meteor that landed in the Bay Area in October, which caused a loud sonic boom as it fell." The eyewitness accounts make it sound pretty spectacular, though; too bad we don't have quite as many dashcams going as there are in Russia.
Re:how cares about meteorites? (Score:5, Informative)
In Russia, they are used as evidence collectors because of all the shady folks trying to game the system. Here in the US, anyone with a dash cam is laughed at by a majority of people. I have a dash cam and people at work assume I have it to catch accidents and think it's a gruesome reason. Also, since people don't throw themselves in front of buses as much as Russians apparently do, the dashcams are not as widely used here.
Re:how cares about meteorites? (Score:4, Informative)
Before you make stupid remarks have you heard the word "search"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_miRPJgwDM [youtube.com]
Video footage (Score:5, Informative)
... too bad we don't have quite as many dashcams going as there are in Russia.
But there are more than enough.... This showed up on Youtube late last night, I believe this is the original poster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpTOc1i8_8
And then a short time later this showed up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkF4sloZmBI
Re:how cares about meteorites? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you even seen A SINGLE ONE video showing a person throwing itself in front of a passing car in any of the million of russian dashcam videos?
Just a single one? Here's about 2 dozen [liveleak.com].
Well two reasons (Score:5, Informative)
One is fraud/insurance issues. Accidents happen and in Russia there are major corruption issues with the authorities and such. Having video evidence is fairly necessary in many cases.
The other? All the crazy shit that happens. When there's stuff like tanks driving across highways randomly and so on, might be a reason to record all of the goings on.
iWitness report (Score:4, Informative)
I saw it through my car windshield while stopped at a traffic light at 18th and Valencia Streets in San Fran City; I have seen other meteors before and this was just like the rest, except for its bright, cobalt-blue trail.
It dropped out of sight behind Twin Peaks; there was no boom that I heard, which makes sense to me as it seemed to be traveling fairly slowly across the sky about 45 degrees above the horizon -- or it was at very high altitude.